Ruy Luís Gomes

Ruy Luís Gomes (5 December 1905 – 27 October 1984) was a Portuguese mathematician who made significant contributions to the development of mathematical physics and the state of academia in Portugal during the twentieth century. He was part of a generation of young Portuguese mathematicians, including António Aniceto Monteiro (1907–1980), Hugo Baptista Ribeiro (1910–1988) and José Sebastião e Silva (1914–1972), who held the common goal of involving Portugal in the global progression of science through conducting and publishing original research. Because of this, however, he began to gain notoriety as a dissident of the Salazar regime, which condemned independent thinking. Eventually, he left Portugal for South America to escape further persecution for his involvement with the Portuguese Communist party. Following his exile, which lasted nearly two decades, Gomes returned to Portugal for the last ten years of his life before he died of a heart attack in 1984.

Early life and education Ruy Luís Gomes was born on 5 December 1905 in Porto, Portugal to Maria José de Medeiros Alves Gomes and António Luiz Gomes, who was a government official during the Portuguese First Republic. He attended high school at Rodrigues de Freitas High School before moving to Coimbra when his father accepted a position at the University of Coimbra. In 1922, he completed his secondary education at José Falcão High School before continuing on to study mathematics at the University of Coimbra. In 1928, he received his doctorate from the University of Coimbra at the age of 23. In his dissertation, he analyzed problems in mechanics regarding deviation from holonomic constraints. Here, he began a relationship with Professor Abel Salazar, who taught Gomes about neopositivism and inspired his research on the Theory of Relativity. Several years later, he would further establish himself as a dissident through his commitment to the National Democratic Movement, where he served as the organization's president. In 1951, he was chosen to be the presidential candidate of the communist party, against the candidate of the regime, General Francisco Craveiro Lopes, and the moderate opposition candidate, Admiral Manuel Quintão Meireles. However, before the election, the Salazar regime enacted measures through the Supreme Court of Justice which disallowed his candidature due to his communist leanings. In the years between his founding of the Centre for Mathematical Sciences in 1942 and his departure for Argentina in 1958, Gomes was imprisoned on numerous occasions for his political affiliations. Thus, he sought refuge in Argentina in order to escape the political persecution that made his scientific research impossible. Several months following the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974, Gomes returned to Portugal, where he served as a member of the Council of State and as rector of the University of Porto (1974–75).